Twittering Machines explores environmental concerns by focusing on the nightingale—one of the few birds that sings to us at night with its beautiful yet sorrowful songs. The piece centers around a vinyl recording of John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, translated into Morse code. Software listens to the live Morse code and translates it back into text. Other sounds begin to interfere with the translation, interrupting the Keats poem. The blips and beeps of the Morse code blend with music boxes, bird-imitation toys, singing bowls, and other objects, all sampled and manipulated live.

Interwoven with the Morse code text are analog films of birds and bird habitats, eco-processed with natural materials. The film is further transformed using physical and chemical methods to interrupt and degrade the image. Keats wrote the poem toward the end of his life, and this performance evokes thoughts of the "five minutes to midnight" state of the current climate crisis, combining hypnotic sounds with bright sun-bleached deserts and fragmented text from Keats' later works.

About the Artist

Kathy Hinde is an audiovisual artist inspired by behaviors and phenomena found in nature and everyday life, expressed through audiovisual installations, performances, and compositions that combine sound, sculpture, image, and light. Through installations, performances, and site-specific experiences, her goal is to nurture a deeper, more embodied connection to the more-than-human world.

Her work is composed of handmade objects, electronics, and a blend of digital and analog systems, representing a crossing between kinetic sound sculptures and newly invented musical instruments. She creates works in response to specific places, often collaborating with other performers and researchers, and frequently involving the audience actively in the creative process.

Her practice emerges from the interaction between nature and technology, expressed through audiovisual installations and performances that combine sound, sculpture, image, and light. Hinde often works in collaboration with other performers and researchers, engaging audiences in the process. Inspired by behavior and phenomena in the natural world, she creates generative work that develops and may vary each time it is experienced.

Kathy Hinde has toured throughout Europe, the USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Colombia, Australia, and New Zealand. Her awards include an Ivor Novello Award for Sound Art in 2020, an honorable mention at Prix Ars Electronica in 2015, a British Composer Award in Sonic Art in 2017, an ORAM Award in 2017, and a Scottish New Music Award for collaboration with Maja Ratkje in 2018. She was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Bath Spa University in 2023, was a selected artist for the European SHAPE Platform for innovative music and audiovisual art in 2018, is a member of ExperimentBristol, and a resident at the Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol.

Kathy Hinde was awarded an Ivor Novello Award for Twittering Machines in the Sound Art category in 2020.

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